Thefts propel overall rise in county crime

“Both the city and county have police vacancies, and both the city and county governments need to beef up police pay as a recruiting tool.”

With homicides down by nearly a third, Anne Arundel County saw a small drop in overall violent crime in 2007. But property crimes, fueled largely by shoplifting and auto thefts, propelled an overall increase in serious crimes over the previous year, statistics released by the Police Department show.

Thefts increased 10 percent to 12,048. Each of the four police districts saw a bump, though the increase was more pronounced in the Northern and Western districts, where the increases were 13.8 percent and 15.5 percent, respectively. The rise in burglaries was largely rooted in the Eastern and Western districts. Read more